ABSTRACT
The first edition of A Reader’s Guide opened in 1985 with com-ments on the likely resistance to theory from those who felt their assumptions about literature, ways of reading, and criteria of value were being challenged. While theory – sustained by its attendant Introductions, Guides, Readers and Glossaries took deep and pervasive root in Departments of English and related areas of study, the anxieties it has engendered have persisted. If the status of the literary canon was in doubt; if the formal integrity of literature or textual evidence were ousted, if the normative unity of the reading subject was questioned – then ‘it must be the fault of “theory” ’, which seems anyway not to be about literature at all (Carroll, 1990; Culler, 1997).
